


All that remains

by Beleriandings



Category: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 23:59:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8775025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: Many years later, Zeno makes some long-overdue visits.





	

Zeno had returned to all the graves, over the years, now and again. 

Even if he had not at the time - and of course he had not, when they were in their last moments, when he could feel their lives slip away - on his many years of travelling, there were only so many places he  _could_ go. 

And, apparently, only so many he could avoid. 

He stood before the great, monolithic white memorial to Guen, a little way off and safely out of sight behind a tree. He knew, now, not to go too close to the village; he still felt the arrow in his back, piercing him through with a pain greater and more familiar than that of simple steel. 

The dappled light through the trees behind played across the marble monument, the darkness of the true tomb’s entrance a little way further on devouring the soft golden afternoon sunlight. 

Zeno hid himself behind the tree, leaning his head back against its rough bark and wishing that the past could be other than it was, that he could go back and undo what he had done. 

Or rather what he had _not_ done. 

After a while, he propped himself back up and stole soundlessly away from the village.

He knew where his feet were taking him next; he was following a trail that had been etched in his heart long before, a trail of one death after another, each life slipping away one by one. 

Abi’s village - former village now, as there had been two or perhaps three successors, he had to remind himself - was a little harder to find, tucked away within the forest. But it was easy enough to follow the soft, quiet presence of the current Seiryuu, delicate blue in the corner of his eye, like the summer sky. 

It made him remember the ache he had felt in his chest as Abi had slipped from the world with a harsh clarity, and he tried not to imagine bitter tears falling from blind eyes, lest he falter.

The village was surrounded by forest but the tomb was underground - that upset Zeno a little, he had not been expecting that - and he walked down a set of stone stairs to get to it. A beautifully carven stone dragon slid to one side to let him pass, regarding him all the while with sightless stone eyes. 

He laid a gentle hand on its head for a moment, then climbed down into the catacomb. 

This place was too dark and cold; Zeno wished he had thought to bring a lamp of some kind, the only illumination a chink of daylight remaining behind him at the statue-guarded gateway. 

Zeno shivered, the sounds of his footsteps falling dead. 

Inside there was a larger chamber, from which came a small golden lantern’s glow; it was even slightly warmer than the passage, and incense burned there, its scent reminding him powerfully - painfully - of his time as a priest, back at the castle. Still, there were flowers too, a little shrivelled and dried, but nevertheless relatively fresh and bright where they had been recently laid before a finely inscribed stone. Zeno could not help but smile. It had been many years - _decades? How long had it been, in fact?_ \- but Abi, like Guen, was still remembered. 

He stood there for quite a long time, in the silent chamber. Still, he was glad to be back out to the open air, when he finally turned to go. The light dazzled him a little, and the sky seemed very bright as he stepped outside again, relishing the little sounds of the birds nesting in the trees, the wind making the leaves flutter and dance in the evening light. 

It was time to move on, again. 

He did not follow the green flickering presence in the back of his mind; for that, he knew, would not lead him to what he sought. 

Shuten had not died in his village, after all. 

Zeno stood at the lip of the ridge, a great tumbling waterfall dropping down into a forested valley at his feet. Behind him, trees scrambled up the shear slope, the ground spilling with lush green undergrowth; there was even a spray of bright purple flowers, a little higher up the hill from the patch of relatively flat ground where Zeno stood. 

Zeno wasn’t even sure this was the exact place; all he knew was the rough location, from where he had felt Shuten’s presence dim for the final time, the successor’s flaring brighter, far off. There was no grave - there would be a memorial in the village, Zeno knew, and the kind of heavy processional grieving that Shuten hated so much, the weight of it pressing in on him. Zeno smiled a little; just like him, then, to leave that behind, to come out here to see the world once more before the power ebbed away from his dragon’s leg once more and he died, a grave somewhere on the hillside covered by soft forest loam, as the years passed. 

Zeno stared off into the west, where the sun was setting. He squinted against the bloody glare, the wind picking up as he did so, ruffling his hair. 

Far off he could see the outline of a hill, capped by a city, with bright roofs glinting red in the last light of the sun. 

He had not known he was so close to Hiryuu castle, but now that he saw it, it was unmistakable. 

He smiled a little, as the wind tugged at his robes, the beads on his medallion clinking a little as they stirred. 

He would have to do it with great secrecy; being seen at Hiryuu castle now, all these years later, was not a prospect he relished. 

(Even if there was no one left to recognise him; in some ways, he thought, that might be even worse.)

It could not be helped though; he had one more place to visit. But he did not hurry, for night would be coming soon and Zeno did not want to make that journey in the dark, alone with his thoughts. 

No, he had time, if he had anything. And so he curled up on the soft, fallen leaves, warmed a little by the last light of the sun, and tried to think of nothing at all. Or at least nothing but the world which was his forever, so it seemed, for he would last as long as it did. He was part of all this, whether he liked it or not. He tried to think of only that, and not the journey he half felt drawn to take tomorrow, half desperately dreaded. 

Still, Zeno thought, just as he began to fall asleep. A journey like that was best undertaken on a new day, the light of a new sun shining down on the world and all the strangeness and pain and beauty that it held. 


End file.
